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In Other Jewish Newspapers: Israel’s Like Mike, Missing Celebrities, ‘Apprentice’ Kosher Chicken Challenge

‘SISTINE SECRETS’: The New York Jewish Week speaks with the Yeshiva University rabbi whose book on Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel has the media buzzing, antisemites foaming and some scholars seething.

IMAM’S DEFENDER: A New Jersey imam facing possible deportation over alleged ties to Hamas has found a defender in an area rabbi, who vouches for his interfaith bridge-building. The New Jersey Jewish News has the story.

BEARISH ON BEIJING BOYCOTT: Brooklyn’s Jewish Press says that Jewish leaders who are calling for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics are “way off base” — singling out for scorn analogies that have been drawn between the upcoming Games and the 1936 Berlin Olympics. “Not only is it disappointing and somewhat insulting for Jews to so casually invoke Nazism, it reflects an amateurish effort to couple a one-dimensional expression of evil with one of the more complicated political phenomena of our time,” the paper’s editorialist writes. On the other side of the country, San Francisco’s J. calls the comparisons with the Berlin Games “all too apparent — and valid.” Nevertheless, J. is also skeptical of Jewish calls for a boycott. “[T]he idea of a boycott is simplistic, and a boycott limited to Jewish tourists is foolish,” J.’s editorialist explains. “China’s daily infusions of billions of dollars are propping up the U.S. economy, while cargo ships arrive hourly teeming with Chinese products. But if the Goldfarbs from Schenectady don’t show up for the Olympics? Yeah, that’ll show ‘em.”

ISRAEL’S LIKE MIKE: Writing in Brooklyn’s Jewish Press, Yoram Ettinger makes the case that Israel has been a boon to America’s national security. Among other things, he notes that Israeli upgrades to American military systems have added value, prompting other countries to purchase them. “Israel, one might say, has been for the U.S. what Michael Jordan has been for Nike,” he writes.

WHO IS A JEW (IN PRISON)?: A Missouri inmate’s white-supremacist ties don’t mean that he doesn’t have a right to kosher food. The inmate claimed that he had converted to Judaism and stopped affiliating with white-supremacist prison gangs. The inmate’s court papers argued that kosher food was a necessity, because without it he “”must choose between eating non-kosher food and death, every bite he takes is done at the peril of his very soul.” St. Louis Jewish Light reports on a federal judge’s ruling in the case.

NEWSOM IN ISRAEL: San Francisco’s high-profile mayor, Gavin Newsom, headed to Israel — and San Francisco’s J. tagged along. The mayor of the famously left-leaning city tells J. that some of the anti-Israel speech that occurs in the Bay Area is antisemitic.

STARS DON’T COME OUT AT NIGHT FOR ISRAEL: For Israel’s 60th birthday, Los Angeles Jews are hosting a big concert at Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre, home of the Oscars. But, the L.A. Jewish Journal finds, Tinseltown’s stars won’t be much in evidence. “”We did not get a great response,” Genie Benson, an event producer, tells the Journal. “I was very surprised. I thought more people would want to jump on board.” Concert organizers did, however, do okay among the older celebrity set: Larry King and Kirk Douglas are both expected to appear.

MORMON MISSIONARIES, MEET JEWS: Several L.A. rabbis are working to explain Judaism to Mormon missionaries — but the missionaries had best be careful how they use their newfound knowledge. “”I want to be clear,” Rabbi Isaac Jeret told the students. “I’m not here to help you missionize. If you really want to build a bridge between the Mormon and the Jewish communities, understand who we are and how vital and important and precious the Jews are to the Jewish people.” The L.A. Jewish Journal reports on these inter-religious encounters.

KEVIN MACDONALD HAS SOME THEORIES: The L.A. Jewish Journal has a lengthy profile of the man it dubs “the professor the anti-Semites love” — California State University Long Beach psychology professor Kevin MacDonald.

SACKS ON FIRST: The Jewish Chronicle’s “JC Power 100” is to British Jewry what the Forward 50 is to American Jewry. Topping the J.C.’s second-annual list of “those who wield the greatest influence on British Jewry” is Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, who topped last year’s list as well (I’m sensing a tradition in the making here). In contrast to the rules of the Forward 50, one doesn’t have to be Jewish to make the J.C.’s list — Prime Minister Gordon Brown clocks in at No. 29.

KOSHER CHICKEN CHALLENGE: Things got messy when the British version of “The Apprentice” — hosted by Jewish businessman Sir Alan Sugar — challenged contestants to procure a kosher chicken in the Moroccan city of Marrakech. London’s Jewish Chronicle has the play-by-play:

How do you kosher a chicken? According to Jewish Apprentice candidate Michael Sophocles, by taking a halal chicken from the Marrakech soukh and then having an extra blessing muttered over it by a Muslim butcher.

This desperate failure to achieve one of the 10 must-have items on Sir Alan Sugar’s list in this week’s BBC One programme achieved a new low back in the boardroom. Sir Alan, with an unerring talent for homing in on disaster, snarled at Sophocles and his fellow chicken-collector, Jenny Celerier, with equal wrath. “I thought it said on your CV you were Jewish? Did you put that on just to impress me? If you’re Jewish, how can you not know what a kosher chicken is?” Sophocles wriggled. “I’m only half-Jewish, Sir Alan,” he muttered. Wrong answer.

Meanwhile, there was some unlovely wriggling from Ms Celerier, who first told Sir Alan that she did not know what kosher meant — a statement he plainly did not believe — and then claimed that she thought that Sophocles knew all about kashrut. Even more of a wrong answer, and it got her fired, only moments after the other Jennifer had also been despatched to the great taxi-stand outdoors. Two firings in one week, and neither of them the Jewish candidate — unbelievable!

The BBC has more on the contest.

I MAKE MISTAKES: In last week’s column, I suggested that the decision by a Toronto synagogue to leave the United Synagogue Conservative Judaism was part of a larger exodus of Canadian congregations sparked in part by dissatisfaction with the movement’s increasingly liberal stances on the religious roles of women and gays. In fact, the synagogue’s leadership had said that concerns about resources and dues were what prompted the split, and that ideology was not a factor. Last month, I mistakenly reported that Rabbi David Gruber, who specializes in interfaith marriages, lives in San Francisco, Calif., when he actually lives in Frisco, Texas.

In Other Jewish Newspapers: Ben Stein Repels, Letter-Carriers vs. Israel, Prince Charles’s Tzedakah

FOUNDING FIREFIGHTERS: Connecticut’s Jewish Ledger explores the history of Lake Waubeeka, a summer community that was founded in 1950 by Ner Tormid, a fraternal organization of Jewish firefighters. The society’s name, the Ledger explains, was a misspelling of the Hebrew ner tamid, or “eternal flame.” Apparently, the firefighters were better at fighting flames than spelling them.

HASIDIC VIGILANTES?: The New York Jewish Week reports that Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes is likening a Hasidic community patrol group to the Bloods and the Crips following an attack on a black man by a group of Jews in Crown Heights. Meanwhile, some Hasidim are complaining that while Hynes is coming down hard in response to this incident, a string of attacks on Jews in the neighborhood remain unsolved. But this isn’t Hynes’s only Jewish problem. The Jewish Week also reports on the aftermath of a controversial plea bargain in which critics say Hynes let a rabbi accused of molesting yeshiva students off easy.

A CLUB THAT WILL HAVE THEM: Rabbis Marc Angel and Avi Weiss have launched a new Modern Orthodox rabbinic association as an alternative to the established and rightward-drifting Rabbinical Council of America, which recently adopted more stringent conversion policies. But, The Jewish Week notes, the new association will also serve another purpose, providing a home to graduates of Weiss’s Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, who have been denied membership by the RCA.

‘REPELLED’ BY BEN STEIN: Ben Stein’s new pro-“intelligent design” documentary “Expelled” repels the editorialist of the New Jersey Jewish News with its linkage of Darwinism and Nazism. “Expelled draws a direct line between Darwin and Hitler, between natural selection and the Selektions of the Holocaust,” the editorialist writes. “It’s like blaming Shakespeare for the English major who committed the Virginia Tech massacre.”

BAT MITZVAH HISTORY: The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle catches up with two women who, 62 years ago, were among the first five girls in the city’s Jewish community to have a bat mitzvah ceremony. “Practically the whole Pittsburgh showed up,” recalls former bar mitzvah girl Gerri Ash Bronk, now 75. “The shul was absolutely packed. Some people thought it was a fantastic idea, some didn’t.”

BALTIMORE’S LIST-LOVERS: In February, the list-lovers of the Baltimore Jewish Times offered up their “Favorite 54” — chronicling the best things about Jewish life in their town. Now, apropos an important anniversary, they’ve come up with a list highlighting on 60 aspects of Israel that they thought their readers should know about — from an all-chocolate restaurant in Rosh Pina to “Jews” (“They’re everywhere and permeate everything”).

IRAQ VETS SPEAK: The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle speaks with some local Jewish veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

TWISTED SISTER CITY: Kansas City chose the Israeli town of Ramle as a sister city of in part because of its diverse population of Arabs and Jews. But then Ramle’s Jewish mayor was quoted in an Israeli newspaper cursing his city’s Arab citizens — and the controversy came to Kansas City. The Kansas City Jewish Chronicle has the story.

IT BEATS EGYPT: The Jewish News of Greater Phoenix reports that Arizona has become a hot spot for Passover vacations:

Like the Israelites who journeyed through the desert and whose story is retold each year during the seder, nearly 3,000 people made their own journey to the desert this year to commemorate this occasion.

However, this time it was a little different.

Instead of tents, today’s “wanderers” celebrated in luxury at four Valley resorts: The Arizona Biltmore, JW Marriott Desert Ridge, the Millennium Resort Scottsdale McCormick Ranch and the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess.

They dined on modern-day manna in the form of bagels (made from potato starch), made-to-order omelets, Belgian waffles, chocolate soufflés, pancakes, pizzas, pastries and sushi (made with quinoa instead of rice).

Wandering in the desert has never been easier.

TEHRANGELES ON OBAMA: The Los Angeles Jewish Journal finds that some leaders of the local Iranian Jewish community are wary about Barack Obama’s calls for engagement with Iran. “Any agreement to negotiate with the [Iranian] regime will give it the sort of legitimacy that it does not currently have but so desperately needs in order to put the last nails in the coffins of those who still have hope for a democratic Iran,” Sam Kermanian, secretary general of the Iranian American Jewish Federation, tells the Journal.

GOING POSTAL: The Canadian Union of Postal Workers has passed a resolution backing the use of boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel, making it, according to The Canadian Jewish News, the first national union in North America to do so. But will they deliver mail addressed to Israel?

‘RIDE TO REMEMBER’: Members of the Jewish Motorcycle Alliance mount their bikes to memorialize the Holocaust, as part of the fourth-annual “Ride to Remember,” which will take place later this month in Omaha, Neb. ““For a Jewish group, we have a unique way of honouring the Holocaust,” Steve Stein, past president of Toronto’s Yidden on Wheels, tells The Canadian Jewish News.

CONSERVATIVES LOSE LARGEST: The biggest Conservative-affiliated congregation in North America has left the movement. Toronto’s Beth Tzedec Congregation is the latest in a string of Canadian synagogues to split with the American-dominated United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. While there have been some complaints by Canadian Conservative congregations over the larger movement’s increasingly liberal stances on the religious roles of gays and women, the rabbi of Beth Tzedec tells The Canadian Jewish News that ideology didn’t play a role in his synagogue’s decision. Rather, he said, the split was prompted by issues having to do with the movement’s allocation of resources.

BLAME MY WIFE: A mayor from New South Wales in Australia is apologizing to Jews after he made the following statement at a public meeting: “Why don’t you jack up the price, why don’t you be a good Jew, why don’t you screw the last dollar out of it like public enterprise would?” The mayor, however, also had a ready explanation for why his remarks were not motivated by malice toward Jews. His wife is Jewish, and the phrase he used is “a phrase my wife uses a lot at home.” The Australian Jewish News has the story.

TEL-AVIV GOES QUACK: Residents of Tel Aviv have fallen in love with a giant inflatable duck that has been perched on top of their city hall. When a municipal worker accidentally pulled the plug on the big bird, causing it to deflate, “hundreds of concerned citizens called us,” one of the project’s organizers tells London’s Jewish Chronicle.

PRINCELY PATRON: London’s Jewish Chronicle reports that Britain’s Prince Charles “was so taken by his involvement in creating a new Polish Jewish community centre, which he opened in Krakow on Tuesday, that he now intends to become involved in another Jewish project in Eastern Europe.”

In Other Jewish Newspapers: What Would Noah Do?, Huckabee vs. Compromise, Red Ken Speaks

YESHIVA BIDDING WARS: The New York Jewish Week reports on how local Modern Orthodox yeshivas have begun offering merit scholarships to compete for top students — a trend that has some saying the new policies ape those of elite secular schools and could ultimately undermine the focus on need-based financial aid.

BOYCOTT BEIJING: While China may be making arrangements for kosher kitchens to draw Jewish tourists to the Olympics, two leading Modern Orthodox rabbis argue in The New York Jewish Week that the communist regime’s policies toward Sudan and Tibet make the Games treyf. Rabbis Irving “Yitz” Greenberg and Haskell Lookstein say that Jews should not attend the Beijing Olympics. “We remember all too well how Nazi Germany sought to attract visitors to the 1936 Olympics in order to distract attention from its persecution of the Jews,” they write. “Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, called the 1936 games ‘a victory for the German cause.’ The Chinese government is hoping for a propaganda victory of its own.”

COMIC DAVENING: One can imagine bored kids hiding comic books inside their Siddurs during Saturday morning services. Now, Brooklyn’s Jewish Press reports, there’s a Siddur that is a comic book.

WHAT WOULD NOAH DO?: The Washington Jewish Week reports on a small sect of philosemites that is focused on upholding the seven laws that, according to Jewish tradition, God expects the non-Jewish descendants of Noah to keep. Meet the Noahides.

FIVE DECADES OF MAHJONG: The St. Louis Jewish Light checks in with a group of local women who have been playing mahjong together for 50 years.

SAVAGE BACKLASH: An interfaith coalition of Kansas City residents is pushing to have hateful right-wing radio host Michael Savage pulled off the air. The Kansas City Jewish Chronicle reports on the Jewish community’s response.

‘J-STREET JIVE’: JStreet, Washington’s new dovish Israel policy lobby, has already drawn its fair share of boosters and critics. Count the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent’s Jonathan Tobin among the second camp. “[T]he notion underlying the whole initiative is based on belief in a creature as mythical as the unicorn: Palestinian peaceniks,” Tobin writes. In The New York Jewish Week, Hannah Rosenthal, former executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, expresses considerably more enthusiasm for the project, writing, “The progressive voice in our community has been far too quiet on Israel for far too long.”

NOT MUSIC TO HIS EARS: A Jewish music aficionado was sitting in a church enjoying a concert based on Christian liturgy — until he read the translation of the lyrics. The Baltimore Jewish Times reports on a contemporary crucifixion controversy.

THE THREE D’S: Writing in the L.A. Jewish Journal, a Methodist bishop and an activist for Afghanistan — both recently returned from a trip to Israel — say that “the destructive D words of Divorce, Dissolution and Divestment” aren’t the right approach to dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

WHERE’S THE MATZO?: San Francisco’s J reports on the local impact of the nationwide matzo shortage of 2008. Down the coast, the L.A. Jewish Journal finds that while area chain supermarkets may be out of matzo, no such scarcity exists in Jewish specialty stores.

AUSSIES RIDE AGAIN… IN BEERSHEVA: Beersheva has a new ornament — a statue of a leaping Australian horseman. The Australian Jewish News reports that the statue commemorates a 1917 victory of an Australian light horse unit in Beersheva that “set in train a series of events that included the liberation of Jerusalem, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate in Palestine and ultimately the establishment of the State of Israel.” Israeli President Shimon Peres and a slew of Israeli and Australian officials are expected to be present at a ceremony inaugurating the statue.

YORK’S ANTI-ANTI ISRAEL STUDENTS: According to a new survey, students at Toronto’s York University are overwhelmingly irked that their student government is using their fees to fund pro-Palestinian activism. The Canadian Jewish News has the story.

HUCK’S HARDLINE: Former GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee told an audience at a Montreal synagogue that he doesn’t think Israel should be pressured into giving up land. “It is foolish to ask Israel, with its tiny piece of real estate, to give it up to those who are avowed to destroying the nation of Israel,” he said. “It makes no sense at all.” The Canadian Jewish News was on the scene.

BOB GELDOF, MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER: Asked whether he was proud of his Jewish ancestry, rocker turned international humanitarian Bob Geldof told Manchester’s Jewish Telegraph, “I could not give a f****** sh**.” Geldof was being interviewed prior to giving a speech at the Manchester Jewish Federation’s annual dinner. In the speech, he recounted a conversation he once had with his Jewish agent in which he said, “I was a quarter Catholic, a quarter Protestant, a quarter Jewish and a quarter nothing — the nothing won.”

RED KEN SPEAKS: London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who has had a rocky relationship with his city’s Jewish community, in part due to his outspoken criticism of Israel, tells London’s Jewish Chronicle that he’s being treated unfairly.

In Other Jewish Newspapers: Exodus From Cleveland?, Airline Ruins Passover, Hummusexual Punk Rock

KOSHER AT FENWAY: The home of the Boston Red Sox has long been famous for its Green Monster. Now, it’s getting kosher dogs. Boston’s Jewish Advocate reports on what may be the greatest moment for Jewish Red Sox fans since 2007.

BRANDEIS DISROBES: Students at Brandeis university get naked for the Earth. Boston’s Jewish Advocate reports on “BARE: Brandeisians Advocating Real Environmentalism,” a new calendar featuring an eco-friendly message and photos of students posing au naturel.

QUESTIONING CONVERTS: Critics are warning that a new Rabbinical Council of America policy streamlining Orthodox conversion could result in heightened scrutiny of the Jewishness of people who have converted to Judaism in the past. The New York Jewish Week has the story.

WEAK PLEA: A plea bargain given to a rabbi who had been charged with sexually molesting students at a Brooklyn yeshiva has some crying foul. According to The New York Jewish Week, the deal has “resurrected questions in some quarters about [Brooklyn District Attorney Charles] Hynes’ competence or his political will in pursuing allegations of wrongdoing involving prominent institutions and individuals in Brooklyn’s politically powerful Orthodox community.”

CUTTING CARTOON: Two New Jersey pols, Rep. Steve Rothman and Senator Frank Lautenberg, are urging Bergen County Democratic Party Chairman Joe Ferriero to back the senator’s reelection. Political cartoonist Rob Tornoe’s take: He puts a butcher’s knife into Rothman’s hand as the county chairman is pinned to an operating table by a yarmulke-clad Lautenberg. The title: “Rothman the Mohel or Ferriero’s Bris.” Suffice it to say, as The New Jersey Jewish News reports, some folks aren’t impressed by Tornoe’s wit or wisdom.

EXODUS FROM CLEVELAND?: A battle is brewing in Cleveland over a controversial proposal to move the local Jewish federation’s headquarters from downtown, where it has long been located for a century, to the ’burbs, where most of Cleveland’s Jews live. Now, The Cleveland Jewish News reports, some 50 civic leaders are urging the federation to stay put as the city works to revitalize its urban core.

RABBI KASHERS COKE: Houston’s Jewish Herald-Voice speaks with Rabbi Yehoshua Wender, who provides kosher supervision to Coca-Cola’s local bottling plant, one of eight nationwide that produces kosher-for-Passover products, including soda with liquid cane sugar instead of the usual corn syrup. “The ‘connoisseurs’ of Coke tend to favor the cane sugar products,” Rabbi Wender tells the paper, “especially the people who have been working at the factory for a long time — they all rush out and buy the Passover Coke. They say it tastes much better, and the ‘balance’ is much better.”

AIRLINE RUINS PESACH: With bargain airline Skybus going belly-up right before Passover, some Seder-goers have been left stranded. Columbus’s New Standard swoops in for a look at this travel nightmare.

PEARL ON DIALOGUE: A recent surge in high-profile overtures from Muslim leaders prompts Judea Pearl “to take a sober look at the enterprise of Jewish-Muslim dialogue” in an article for the L.A. Jewish Journal.

YIDCORE TO ZION (SANS HUMMUS): The Aussie Jewish punk rockers of Yidcore are headed to Israel for a tour. But don’t expect to see any of their signature hummus-throwing this time around. “I used to strip down on stage and schmear it all over myself before stage diving,” the band’s pierced frontman, Bram Presser, tells The Australian Jewish News. It was disgusting but pretty funny. That ended after we destroyed the stage at legendary New York club CBGBs, and I was forced to stay after the show and scrub the floors.” A Tel Aviv club was similarly irked by the band’s wild ways and rowdy fans; Presser says it took five years to convince the venue to allow them back. “Now, Presser says, “what we do with hummus in the privacy of our own homes is our own business.” In anticipation of its Israel tour, the band has recorded a new release, “The Hummusexual EP.”

POWER FOR PESACH: Following protests from local Jews, an Australian electricity company postponed electricity disruptions that were scheduled to begin during the run-up to Passover. The Australian Jewish News shines some light on the subject.

CRUMBY SEA OF GALILEE: A week before Passover, London’s Jewish Chronicle reports, Israel’s water company disconnects Jerusalem from the national water pipeline that brings water from the Sea of Galilee. For a period of two weeks, residents of the capital city rely solely on water piped in from local reservoirs and wells. Why all this trouble? Because some Haredi Jews are wary of the crumbs that fisherman and picnickers leave in the Sea of Galilee. Apparently, extremism in avoidance of chametz is no vice.

In Other Jewish Newspapers: Kinder Gentler Hagee, Elizabeth Berkley Speaks, Canada’s Vanishing Jews

KINDER GENTLER HAGEE?: Pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, has had a rocky past few weeks. First, he landed in the national media spotlight after being accused of being anti-Catholic. Then, last week, the leader of the Union for Reform Judaism urged the Jewish community to steer clear of the philosemitic preacher. Now, some Jewish communal activists say, it appears that Hagee is trying to smooth his rougher edges in an apparent bid to strike a more respectable profile. The New York Jewish Week has the story.

MRS. KAHANE REMEMBERS: The wife of assassinated Jewish extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane speaks with Brooklyn’s Jewish Press about her late husband. The firebrand rabbi’s widow has put together a new book, “Rabbi Meir Kahane: His Life and Thought, Volume One: 1932-1975.”

SCHIZOPHRENIC ON EDUCATION: New Jersey Jewish News editor Andrew Silow-Carroll let’s us in on the vigorous debate that took place between his head and his heart when it came time to choose either public schools or Jewish schools for his kids.

AFTER ‘SHOWGIRLS’: Philadelphia’s Jewish Exponent chats with “Step It Up & Dance” host Elizabeth Berkley about life after “Showgirls.”

WHO NEEDS RABBIS WHEN…: A headline in Philadelphia’s Jewish Exponent: “Study: Consultants May Hold the Key to Future of Synagogues.”

NO TIME FOR GAMES: Among the voices protesting the Olympic torch’s passage through San Francisco were American Jewish World Service prexy Ruth Messinger and novelist Michael Chabon. San Francisco’s J. reports on the convergence of advocates for Darfur and Tibet on the streets of Baghdad by the Bay. Meanwhile, on a coast far far away, the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent’s Jonathan Tobin writes that the Games are no fun while people in Darfur, Tibet and China are suffering human rights abuses.

SIZE MATTERS: Columbus singles say its hard to meet a mate given their city’s relatively small Jewish community. “It’s just a numbers issue,” Rabbi Michael Unger tells Columbus’s New Standard. “We don’t have the same numbers as places like Chicago, New York or even Cleveland.”

BURNED OUT: The Detroit Jewish News reports on the aftermath of the fire at a senior citizen housing complex located on a Jewish community campus.

‘YES’ MAN: Rabbi David Gruber, a self-described “Orthodox rabbi turned secular humanist Jew,” has found a niche performing interfaith weddings. The Texas Jewish Post talks with a rabbi who, as the paper puts it, “will say ‘yes’ when others have said ‘no.’”

THE BRIDGE IS OURS: For many months, pro-Palestinian protestors have commandeered a local highway overpass to display anti-Israel signs to passing motorists. Now, pro-Israel activists are demonstrating that two can play at that game: They showed up at the bridge with their own signs shortly before the pro-Palestinian vigil was set to begin. Houston’s Jewish Herald-Voice declares victory in the latest round of the battle for the Mandell Street bridge:

When PAA [Progressive Action Alliance, the group behind the anti-Israel protests] activists began to arrive for their protest, at 4:45 p.m., they appeared dumbfounded and confused. Some simply returned to their vehicles and drove away, while a few others paced back and forth on the bridge, grumbling on cellphones or sat pouting on the adjacent concrete barrier. Though the remaining PAA activists were invited to stage their own protest on the other side of the bridge, or on another bridge nearby — which would have juxtaposed their messages of hate with those of peace and tolerance — they, instead, left.

METHODISTS OVER JEWS?: The Union for Reform Judaism is negotiating to sell a beloved Northern California Jewish camp to a Methodist group for $6 million — even though area Jews had raised $5 million to buy and save the facility. San Francisco’s J. doesn’t seem pleased with the URJ’s single-minded focus on the fiscal bottom line — and notes that along with a camp, the movement will be abandoning a Holocaust memorial on its premises,

SOKATCH TO SAN FRAN, TARSY FACES HISTORY: As head of the Los Angeles-based Progressive Jewish Alliance, Daniel Sokatch quickly built up the newbie activist group into a left-leaning powerhouse. Now, the L.A. Jewish Journal reports, he’s headed up the coast to San Francisco and to a new job as the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation’s numero uno. In other migrating Jewish communal activist news, Boston’s Jewish Advocate reports that former New England Anti-Defamation League director Andrew Tarsy — who famously crossed swords last year with national ADL big kahuna Abe Foxman over the Armenian genocide issue — is taking a job with Facing History and Ourselves, a local nonprofit that promotes tolerance through (what else?) genocide education.

THE VANISHING CANADIAN JEW: The most recent Canadian census shows a steep drop in the number of people identifying themselves as ethnically Jewish, The Canadian Jewish News reports. In five years, the count declined from 348,605 Jews to only 315,120 in 2006. “It’s difficult to interpret. My initial reaction is surprise… It’s very strange, shocking, really,” demographer Charles Shahar tells the paper.

QUMRAN IS A PLACE IN…: The Jewish state’s tourism office recently got slammed in Britain for false advertising over a magazine ad that seemed to imply that the West Bank locale where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered is in Israel. London’s Jewish Chronicle reports on how Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority tried to teach Israel’s Government Tourist Office a geography lesson.

POSH PARTY IN CASTLE: Shimon Peres was a no-show; the host, the Duke of Edinburgh, was absent because of a chest infection; there was kvetching about the high ticket prices; someone apparently neglected to invite the president of the Zionist Federation, and many of British Jewry’s leading lights stayed home. Other than that, things seem to have gone pretty well at the historic — and historically unprecedented — 60th birthday celebration for the State of Israel at Windsor Castle. They even managed to kasher the royal household kitchens. London’s Jewish Chronicle has the story.

SINO-SEPHARDIC SYNAGOGUE SURGE: The Jerusalem-based Shehebar Sephardic Center is opening new synagogues in Beijing and Shanghai, Jewish Times Asia reports. In other Shanghai news, the Chinese government opened Shanghai’s historic Ohel Rachel Synagogue for its first Jewish wedding in 60 years. Jewish Times Asia has the story of the simcha.

A ‘STOUSH’ OVER ISRAEL: Leaders of two leading Australian unions are trading angry words, with one blasting the other for signing onto a newspaper advertisement criticizing Israel. The Australian Jewish News characterizes the exchange as “a stoush,” which, according to Answers.com, is Aussie-speak for “a brawl or fight, a scrap.”

BEWARE FACEBOOK: Australian Jewish groups are being warned by the Community Security Group to not promote their events on Facebook because of security fears, The Australian Jewish News reports. The warning comes on the heels of an incident in which an Australian Jewish woman received a death threat from someone who said he was a member of Hezbollah after she rebuffed his online friend request. Fortunately, the newspaper reports, the individual “was, in fact, a 16-year-old from Lebanon with no real links to the terror group.”

SOLIDARITY UNDER FIRE: A group of travelers from the Canada-Israel Committee came under sniper fire while they were touring near the Gaza-Israel border with Israel’s security minister, Avi Dichter. While none of he Canadians were hurt, Dichter’s bureau chief, Mati Gil, was hit by gunfire and hospitalized in stable condition. The Canadian Jewish News has the story.